Make Your Presentation MemorableAudiences typically forget 90% of what they have heard within

1 month!

20 minutes 7 days 1 month0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

60%

30%

10%

Audience Retention

% Customers gained

So you’ve got to do something pretty spectacular to have your message remembered – or do you?

Good presenters are created not born!

Those with what looks like a natural flair are most often those who prepare more thoroughly. Steve Jobs is a great example of this. He prepared so thoroughly he was able to make it seem as though he was presenting totally off the cuff. In reality he prepared more thoroughly than most of us could hope to do – the effect – his presentations appeared totally natural and relaxed.

Thorough preparation makes you absolutely confident in what you’re going to say, how you’re going to say it and what you want your audience to do as a result.

With that level of preparation why wouldn’t any of us look like a “natural”?

If we prepare like Steve Jobs then we will be able to focus on communicating with our audience – often with non-verbal messages which in turn helps deliver our messages all the more effectively.

For those of us who still hold some fear of standing up and speaking in public there are a number of techniques that we can use to ensure that our presentation is viewed as successful by the audience.

The first thing you can do in order to make your presentation successful is to prepare thoroughly. It’s like anything in life or business, the better you are prepared the more capable you are to deal with the unexpected – and the unexpected can and does happen (especially when you least want it to).

The most important thing to consider before you do anything else is what action / change / decision do you want the audience to make as a result of the presentation. Are you trying to educate, inform or entertain them? When you know this everything else is all about making sure that you get them to reach the same conclusion as you and go along with your suggestion / call to action.

Next consider who the audience are – are they experts in the subject, do they know very little, or are they somewhere in between or a mix of all three?

You have most likely been asked to deliver this presentation (or section) because you are an expert in the subject matter. This is always a good starting point, and in itself should give you some confidence. But, it is critical to research much further into the subject, so that you build up a reasoned and credible case. You will most likely end up with much more material than you will ultimately use – this additional information could be vital for the question & answer session that inevitably follows.

Once you have gathered all of the information you may require you can now start preparing the actual presentation. There are three distinct stages – the structure (the overall shape), the content (the detail), and the delivery (how you communicate). Let’s take each section in turn to see what is required each step of the way.

Structure:

Plan the “story” you want to tell, bearing in mind who your audience are and what action / changes you want them to make as a result of your presentation.

Always have an introduction, a main body and a conclusion.

To be effective communication needs to have some repetition – so that the audience has more than one opportunity to hear your message. (Work on the basis of tell em what you’re going to tell em, tell em, and then tell em what you’ve told em).

The Introduction

In the introduction tell them why it’s in their interest to listen and act on the presentation (these are benefits – the what’s in it for them). Be concise here and grab their attention – some significant statistic or fact to grab their attention is good. Equally something that challenges what they think they know should also get their attention!

Also in the introduction let them know how long your presentation will last for, so they can scope this in their mind. There is nothing worse than not knowing how long something is going to last for – at the very least it’s very distracting - and you telling them is also a sign of professionalism in that you know. This in itself gives you some credibility straight away.

Don’t tell them your life and career history – quite frankly they don’t care about you – it’s the what’s in it for them that they want to know. If you want to give them some info on yourself have the person who introduces you give 30-45 seconds absolute max. on your credentials / expertise / experience – but nothing else.

Main Body

At the start of each main section of the presentation tell them what you’re going to cover there – keep this to very short bullets, or visuals that represent them is even better. Then deal with each section in a factual manner – avoid giving them lots of detail (unless this is absolutely fundamental to the argument) as they will forget most of this anyway.

Summary / conclusion

When you get to the end tell them by saying something obvious like “in conclusion, or to summarize” then give them 1,2 or 3 – absolutely no more of the strongest arguments you’ve used during the body of the presentation and leave them with these. It is these that they will remember.

You can refer back to where you started, by saying that I said I was going to tell you x, y, z well that’s what I’ve done (it should be blindingly obvious).

Content.

Having worked out a framework for the key messages you are going to communicate and having checked that the story flows logically (otherwise re-order it so it does) you can then start to flesh out each section.

Add detail for each section and think about what you need to bring this to life (evidences and proofs). These are what you use to substantiate (prove) your argument. Lists of tables or numbers are not very good ways of showing these, but strong visual representations are. Do you have these already, if not who does and can you get them? Always check if using material from a colleague that they know how you are going to use their material and double-check that they are accurate.

Having fleshed out the structure with your content read it out loud to yourself,, to check that the logic still holds and the arguments don’t contradict one another. At this stage it is common to have to re-order key points or re-word them in order that they flow better together. Having done this you should also have an idea as to how long the presentation will take to deliver, and thus how much material you need to take out. [This is the case in 90% of the clients we work with!]

Avoid too much detail for several reasons. Firstly, it may trip you up when you are presenting. Secondly, the audience probably won’t be able to either absorb all the detail or remember it. Thirdly, it distracts from the core messages that you absolutely want them to remember. LESS IS MORE is the golden rule!

Delivery.

People will remember more about how you said something than the actual words that you spoke so it is crucial that your delivery is the best it can be. Once again there are techniques that you can use in order to increase the focus of the audience and thus increase how much of what you say they remember.

By this stage if you’ve done everything above you should be quietly confident that you know what you’re going to be talking about which gives you confidence and so you can relax and enjoy the experience. I accept that “enjoy” may not be the first thought in your mind, but if you can convince yourself that you might enjoy the experience then the likelihood is that you will.

The brain sees things like this as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and whatever you think will be the outcome is more than likely how it will turn out – so tell yourself you ARE going to enjoy it as you’ve worked very hard to prepare thoroughly.

Remember, you are going to tell them something that it is in their interest to hear, and that they will benefit from your presentation.

The audience wants you to succeed, for them there is nothing worse than listening to a presenter die on their feet – it’s embarrassing. They would rather you succeed; it makes their life so much easier!

The single most important thing to be is enthusiastic – how can you expect to carry an audience with you if you are not displaying energy and passion for the subject. This doesn’t mean you have to try to become something you’re not, because the audience will see you as phoney if you do. It means taking your natural style, and adding authority and presence through your tone and manner (body language).

The trick is to engage with the audience early – in the first 60 seconds preferably – get them on your side and keep them there. This is where your pithy (what’s in it for you statement / comment / challenge) comes in. It must be something that captures their imagination, is credible and offers them hope.

Another part of engaging with them is to remove barriers – get out from behind the lectern or desk. This means you can move around more, which in turn means you can have more eye contact, use body language to maximum effect and make it easier for the audience to focus on you. Your slides or props are just that – there to support you, not the other way around.

When speaking to a massed audience it is very important to use you voice carefully. You need to ensure that your voice can be heard at the back of the auditorium (sound gets muffled when a room is full of people).

Equally you need to talk more slowly than you would in everyday speech. This is to allow people time to absorb and think about what you have said.

Use pauses often. They allow people to absorb what you’ve said. Pause after saying anything especially important – this not only allows the audience time to absorb and consider what you’ve said but the pause itself tells them that what you just said is something they should pay particular attention to – and they will – if you give them the opportunity. Whilst paused make strong eye contact with as many people as possible – let them acknowledge your eye contact, then move on to more of the audience – this is very powerful!

As this is the single most important section of the preparation and the amount of time you invest here will be re-paid ten-fold. You need to rehearse the presentation from end to end at least 4-6 times, more if you can! Why, well, once you have done it this many times you will know the material so well that you will be less reliant on your notes and also need to think less about what you say and more about how you say it.

Make the rehearsal as realistic as possible – deliver the presentation in front of friends or family or look at yourself in a mirror(yes it will feel embarrassing, but you can iron out what sounds good and what doesn’t and change phrases that don’t sound quite right). You will also see those idiosyncrasies that you have – hands in pocket, going “um” a lot, shuffling or pacing and you can then work on reducing them – I didn’t say getting rid of them altogether, just get them under control.

Once you’ve done the presentation in front of friend, family or a mirror doing it in front of a live audience is relatively straightforward – honestly!

In Conclusion

We can all present well if we make sure we follow a few basic principles.

1. Be clear what it is you want the audience to do as a result of listening to you. Make sure you tell them what your purpose is early on.

2. Provide appropriate detail, in the form of evidences and proofs, to convince them that this course of action is to their advantage.

3. Engage with the audience. Make a personal connection with them, no matter how numerous they are.

Most important of all is to rehearse the presentation sufficiently so that you know the material so well you can concentrate on how you engage the audience, and are not just thinking about what you have to say. How many rehearsals this is depends on you, but the acknowledged industry thinking is that this will be between 5-8 times for the first time you present the material and 3-5 thereafter.

The Presentation Materials

PowerPoint is the most commonly used tool, and whilst it gets a lot of bad press “death by PowerPoint” this says more about the how presenters use it not the tool itself.

There are many things that you can do to make PowerPoint work for you, some of the more obvious ones are:

Don’t use bullets – they are dull. If you do use them do NOT read them out – this is an insult to the audience – they don’t need you if they can just read everything from the screen!

Keep slides plain – backgrounds that are too fussy will distract the audience. If you want to use a coloured background, chose pastel colours, something that compliments the subject matter – if you are talking finance don’t go with bright pink for example.

Contrast background - to the text and ensure that both are suitable for the lighting in the room where the presentation is to be delivered.

Use clear fonts - make them large enough to be read – from the back of the auditorium

Slide transitions – Keep these simple. Do not use animation to “fly in” or the like, have the text / visuals come up either all at the same time, or on your click – whichever suits best

Minimum number of slides – Too many slides and the audience will be focused on them and not you. Only use slides to add extra value to what you are saying, they support you, not the other way round.

Do not keep turning around to look at the slides – the audience does not want to see the back of your head. If you want to know what’s on the screen position a pc in front of you – whatever you see there is what the audience can see. You can half turn to point to something on the slide, but do so as infrequently as possible and always face the front when speaking

At the Bid Coach are experts in training your teams to win.

Contact Hugh at:hugh@thebidcoach.com

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